fragment:target-audience-5

Link to article: fragment:target-audience-5.

:root{
--general-border-color: 50, 16, 178;
/*scrollbar*/
    --basalt-dark-element-color: 123, 112, 229;
/*links and highlights*/
    --basalt-bright-element-color: 33, 19, 106;
}
body {
    background-image: url(https://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/local--files/target-audience/Mist_bg);
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#page-content a.collapsible-block-link {
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color: ##210687; border: solid 3px #210687; background: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.616); padding:10px; margin: -10px;

```
--content: 'Return to previous page';
```
```
--content: 
```
```
width:600px;
```
```
--content: '“Good night.”';
```

```
style01-link
```
```
style01-plaintext
```
```
animation04
```
```
style04-plaintext
```
```
animation03
```
```
style05-link
```
```
style05-plaintext
```
```
animation02
```

[[include :scp-wiki:theme:basalt darkmode=a|redmode=b|hidetitle=a]]
[[include :scp-wiki:component:glitch-elements]]

[[module CSS]]
:root{
--general-border-color: 50, 16, 178;
/*scrollbar*/
    --basalt-dark-element-color: 123, 112, 229;
/*links and highlights*/
    --basalt-bright-element-color: 33, 19, 106;
}
body {
    background-image: url(https://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/local--files/target-audience/Mist_bg);
    background-attachment: fixed;
    background-size: cover;
}
body:before {
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  position: fixed;
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  top: 0;
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  background-image: linear-gradient(170deg, transparent, rgb(0, 0, 0) 100%, rgb(0, 0, 0) 100%, rgb(0, 0, 0) 100%);
  z-index: -1;
  color:#EDEDED;
}

/* Link colors */
a:link {
  color: #E0E0E0;
}
a:visited {
  color: #E0E0E0;
}
a:hover {
  color: #E0E0E0;
}
a:active {
  color: #E0E0E0;
}

#page-content .peepoo a {
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#page-content .peepoo hr {
    border-color: #870F06;
}

#page-content a.collapsible-block-link {
    font-weight: bold;
}
.style05-plaintext {
  padding-right: 0.5ch;
}
[[/module]]

[[div style="color: ##210687; border: solid 3px #210687; background: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.616); padding:10px; margin: -10px;"]]

[[a class="style01-link" href="https://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/target-audience/offset/4" target="_parent"]][[span class="style01-plaintext animation04" style="--content: 'Return to previous page';"]]Return to previous page[[/span]][[/a]]

----

[[=]]
[[span class="style04-plaintext animation03" style="--content: "Chapter 5";"]]Chapter 5[[/span]]
[[/=]]

Over the course of the next two weeks, I adapted to this new and unusual situation I had found myself in and began to get to know the creature. I spent almost every ounce of my spare time interacting with her, as well as teaching her sign language and spoken English. I was simply astounded by how quickly she was able to absorb and retain new information. Her ability to quickly memorize and perfectly recall the signs I taught her strongly indicated that she, much like myself, possessed a photographic memory. On top of that, she also exhibited an unquenchable thirst for knowledge, as exemplified by the fact that as soon as she learned the sign for “more”, she kept using it to prompt me to continue to teach her.

While I would’ve thought that I would get burnt out having to spend each workday giving lessons both at campus and then at home, teaching the creature turned out to be an absolute delight. It was so incredibly rewarding to help an alien being like her learn how to communicate. Not just that, but the sheer joy she expressed at learning new signs and how to string them together was positively infectious.

Given that I could only see her clearly and at length through reflective surfaces, I ended up buying a mirror that I could carry around and set up pretty much anywhere, allowing me to see and communicate with the creature no matter where I was. Naturally, I only ever brought it out when I was alone, usually at home.

Whenever I wasn’t looking in a mirror, I would frequently see the creature in the corner of my eye, and while it was initially uncomfortable and distracting, I eventually got used to it. Thankfully, my disability gave me the perfect poker face, so I could still go out and about as well as teach without showing so much as a hint that I was seeing something that no one else could. Of course, I also wanted to make sure that no one but me could see the creature, so I bought a digital camera and used it to take pictures of her reflection. As I suspected, the pictures showed no sign of her, strongly suggesting that no one but me could see her.

While I had initially thought that I would only be able to see the creature in the corner of my eye or through a reflective surface, it turned out that I could also briefly see her standing over me whenever I was falling asleep or waking up. Seeing her that way in the dark was a bit unsettling at first, but the more we got to know each other, the less it bothered me. As it turned out, she didn’t sleep. At all. As such, with little else to do, she would spend all night watching me. That is until I started to download and create playlists of educational kids’ shows that I would then run on my computer for hours on end, allowing her to continue to learn while I was asleep. Though, even with that, she’d continue to watch me sleep at least for a couple of hours every night.

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Although only two weeks had passed since we first met, she had gotten enough of a handle of sign language at this point that she was able to put together simple sentences consisting of two, or sometimes even three, signs.

It was late in the evening. As usual, I had spent several hours teaching her new signs and sentence structures after coming home from work, using my portable mirror to communicate with her.

[[=]]
[[include :scp-wiki:component:image-features-source |blur-reveal=--]
|blur-amount=1.1
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|float=true
|align=center
|width=430px
|url=https://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/local--files/target-audience/Lovelace_scene_2
|add-caption=false
]]
[[/=]]

Then, out of nowhere, she signed “My name what?”

The question surprised me. How did she not know her own name?

“Don’t you have a name?” I asked in response.

“No,” she signed. “Give name.”

“You… You want me to give you one?” I asked to clarify.

She nodded enthusiastically. “Yes! Give name.”

The request surprised me and it felt a little wrong to just name her as if she was a pet or something. I thought about it carefully, wanting to make sure that I actually gave her something good that fit her. To my surprise, the first name that popped up in my head was ‘Haley’. It was then that I realized that the loneliness I had felt ever since her passing had been absent ever since I first made contact with the creature. Not only had I not noticed, but now I realized that I hadn’t even thought about Haley all that much in the past two weeks. I couldn’t help but feel guilty about that. I knew I wasn’t capable of it, yet it felt as if I had somehow forgotten about her.

The creature cocked her head to the side. “Sad why?”

Although I was incapable of showing emotion the way most people did, she had been around me long enough now to be able to tell that I always got quiet whenever I felt upset.

“I was thinking about my sister,” I replied.

“Have sister you?”

“I did. A twin sister. We were a lot alike,” I explained. I regarded the creature for a moment before I added “You remind me of her.”

This seemed to pique her curiosity further. “Sister where?”

“She’s… she’s gone.”

“Go where?”

I let out a drawn-out sigh. “She’s… dead.”

“‘Dead’ what?” It wasn’t a sign she had learned yet. “Teach sign.”

“Maybe later.”

“No, teach now!” The creature pleaded with her pure-white puppy dog eyes, her ears flattening against her head. “Want learn more!”

“It’s… too complex. You have to know more first before I can teach it to you,” I lied.

The truth was that it simply hurt too much to talk about what happened to Haley.

She cocked her head from side to side. I might have imagined it, but it seemed as if she could pick up on the fact that it was causing me pain to talk about it. Finally, she signed “Okay.”

Suddenly, her reflection disappeared and I could see her in the corner of my eye. Not only that, but I could feel her proximity.

I let out a gasp as I felt a shiver along the uppermost portion of my body.

Then, all of the strange sensations came to an end and the creature’s reflection returned to the mirror.

“What… What was that?” I asked.

“Hug,” she signed back to me with her eyelids raised in a smile.

I huffed a laugh. Normally, I was strongly averse to physical contact of any sort, but I wasn’t sure if what she did could even count as such. Even so, I appreciated the gesture.

“Thank you,” I said and put on a smile.

“You welcome,” she signed back. Then, she gave me this pleading yet expectant look and asked “Give name?”

“Of course. Hold on, let me think…”

I thought about Haley’s favorite female scientists, the ones who had inspired her and helped kindle her passion for science. Out of all of them, one stood out—Vera Rubin, the astronomer whose work in galaxy rotation rates provided compelling evidence for the existence of dark matter. Just like the creature, dark matter could not be directly observed, so naming her after Vera Rubin felt like a fitting choice.

“How about ‘Vera’?” I suggested.

“Vera?” She paused to think as if she was trying it out in her head. Finally, she raised her eyelids in a smile and wagged her tail. “Yes! Love name! Good name!”

It was obvious how much being given a name meant, and I was happy for her. Still, the fact that she apparently didn’t already have a name was odd, and it made me wonder about who and what she really was, and where she came from.

Figuring that she had a good enough handle on sign language to give some answers at this point, I asked “Who are you, really?”

“Vera,” she signed back excitedly.

“No, I mean… What are you?” I clarified.

Vera paused to think and then responded with “I yours.”

Her answer confused me, and I figured that she simply did not understand the question.

“No. I’m asking what you are,” I tried to clarify. “I’m human. What are you?”

“I yours,” she repeated. “You mine.”

While it was certainly an interesting way to describe our strange bond, it didn’t answer the question. Then again, it was possible that she didn’t actually understand what she was.

“What is the first thing you remember?” I asked.

“In city. Go find you,” Vera signed in response.

What immediately came to mind was the very first picture I had been sent. It had been taken at Harvard Square, which was arguably in the city. Had she somehow come into being the moment I installed the MalO app? It was hard to believe that that was the case, but her existing in the first place was equally implausible, yet here she was. And if me installing the app had created her, then was there a reason why Vera reminded me of Haley? Had I somehow imbued her with some of Haley’s traits when I downloaded it? Or perhaps Vera was Haley in some shape or form?

No. No, that was ridiculous…

“Teach more?” Vera signed, snapping me out of my reverie.

“Yes. Yes, of course.”

I spent the rest of the night teaching her more signs and helping her refine her grammar. Then, as the day grew to a close, we ended the session and I went to set up this night’s playlist of educational kids’ shows. Then, I went to the bathroom to prepare for bed.

Out of all of the things I had to get used to, the most difficult one was Vera’s ignorance of the concept of privacy and her insistence of watching me almost all the time. At first, I had considered covering the bathroom mirror whenever I had to shower or do my business, but I knew that that would provide me with nothing but the illusion of privacy. Thankfully, Vera didn’t seem to watch me out of any sort of perverse voyeurism. No, she just enjoyed being around me and simply did not understand why I would want to be alone from her at times.

With my business done in the bathroom, I finally went to bed after first setting up the mirror on my nightstand. As I got comfortable under the covers, I looked at Vera’s reflection. While I had once found the way she watched me to be unnerving, I now saw the warmth and tenderness in her pure-white eyes, and found comfort in it. Even so, I had to wonder…

[[=image https://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/local--files/target-audience/Lovelace_scene_3 style="width:600px;"]]

“Don’t you ever get tired of watching me sleep?”

“No. Like watch,” Vera signed in response, her eyelids raised in a smile.

“Yeah, but you must get bored doing it for hours on end, right?”

She cocked her head to the side, seemingly confused by the question. Finally, she replied “No, like watch.”

Her reaction was odd. Had she simply failed to understand the question, or was it possible that she was actually incapable of experiencing monotony? If so, it would add yet another quality that made her both alien and utterly fascinating.

“No matter.” I let out a yawn. “Good night, Vera.”

[[=]]
----
@@ @@
++ [[a class="style05-link" href="https://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/target-audience/offset/6" target="_parent"]][[span class="style05-plaintext animation02" style="--content: '“Good night.”';"]]“Good night.”[[/span]][[/a]]
@@ @@
[[/=]]

[[/div]]

fragment:target-audience-5

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